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Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused to allow surgeons to perform what could have been life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer, says his biographer Walter Isaacson. “While Mr. Jobs was trying all sorts of alternative [medicine] his tumor grew, and grew, and grew.” Read more about Steve Jobs cancer treatment after the break.

Jobs waited so long before seeking normal treatment that he had to undergo a Whipple procedure, losing his pancreas and whole duodenum in 2004. This was the first alarming sign that his disease had progressed beyond a compact primary to at least a tumor so large his Pancreas and duodenum could not be saved.

Jobs seemingly waited long enough for the disease revealed to have spread extensively to his liver. The only reason he did have a transplant after a GEP-NET would be that the tumor invaded all major parts of the liver, which takes a considerable amount of time. Years, in most neuroendocrine tumors. It could be that this happened before his diagnosis, but the risk grows exponentially with time.

We then saw the tumor slowly draining the life out him. It was a horrible thing to see him lose weight and slowly turn into a skin and bones form of himself.

Yet it seems that even during this recurrent phase, Mr. Jobs opted to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.

Isaacson “The creator of Steve Jobs Biography” said:

I have asked [Jobs why he did not get an operation then] and he said, I did not want my body to be opened…I did not want to be violated in that way, Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you do not want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. we talked about this a lot,” he tells Kroft. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it. I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”

Hear more of Isaacsons revelations about Jobs in his first interview about his biography “Steve Jobs” on Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.